And-Ones: Deng, Knicks, Dragic, West
The Luol Deng report from the RealGM scouting service that was the source of the racially charged statements that Hawks GM Danny Ferry said aloud in a June conference call contains several tidbits of collateral information on storylines surrounding Deng the past couple of years. One of the anonymous sources quoted in the report points to hard feelings Deng had toward the Bulls as they allegedly pushed him to play through injury and played hardball with an extension offer. The same source cites “major locker room issues” that existed between two Cavaliers during Deng’s tenure there, and while the names are redacted, many accounts have pointed to tension between Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters. The report also pointed to interest in Deng from the Hornets, Suns, Mavs and Lakers around last year’s trade deadline. Aside from the most explosive racial comments, the report contains a few mild criticisms of Deng’s ability on the court and his persona off of it, but mostly serves to paint Deng as a valuable player and an upstanding character. While the fallout from the Hawks saga continues, here’s more from other corners of the league:
- Knicks president Phil Jackson tells Scott Cacciola of The New York Times that he and owner James Dolan didn’t speak in August and have otherwise been having only a couple conversations a month as Dolan keeps his promise not to interfere. An agent said to Cacciola that when he appealed to Dolan when Jackson wouldn’t budge in negotiations, he found the owner unwilling to provide recourse behind Jackson’s back, and Dolan insists to the Times scribe that he won’t change his ways if the team starts losing this season.
- Zoran Dragic acknowledged that playing in the NBA appeals to him but said he’s on his way to training camp with Spain’s Unicaja Malaga, as he told Gal Zbačnik of Kosarka.si (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). Dragic’s contract with the team reportedly gives him until October 5th to find an NBA deal, and several teams appear to be in pursuit.
- Delonte West has agreed to return to China on a one-year deal with the Shanghai Sharks, reports Chris Haynes of the Plain Dealer (on Twitter). West, who hasn’t played in the NBA since the 2012/13 preseason, spent last year with China’s Fujian Sturgeons.
Hawks Rumors: Friday
It had been a quiet offseason for the Hawks, but they wound up making waves in undesirable fashion this week as racially charged language from controlling owner Bruce Levenson and GM Danny Ferry plunged the franchise into turmoil. We’ll track today’s developments here, and any additional updates will be added to the top.
5:03pm update:
- Players union interim executive director Ron Klempner issued a statement acknowledging Ferry’s public apology to Deng. USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt provides a full transcript of the statement via Twitter. “The NBPA deplores the insensitive & thoroughly inappropriate remarks by Danny Ferry,” Klempner said in part. “We are pleased to learn that Ferry acknowledges his statements were offensive, has extended a personal apology to Luol Deng and the other Atlanta Hawks players and that the Hawks organization has determined that discipline of Ferry was warranted.”
3:49pm update:
- Kyle Korver says Deng told him he doesn’t believe Ferry or anyone with the Hawks organization is a racist, and Korver also expressed his own support for the team in an interview with Vivlamore. “My thoughts are, when I got traded to the Hawks, I didn’t want to come here because all I knew was what I had heard, about bad culture and no fans and no excitement in the city,” Korver said in part. “So I didn’t want to come to Atlanta. At all. I was bummed to leave Chicago. But by the next summer, I chose to re-sign and come back to Atlanta. After a year of watching what Danny (Ferry) was doing and the people he was bringing in. Everything I saw, was so attractive to me and I really believed in it. I believed that he was going to turn things around. I saw that Atlanta was an incredible city, and that there was so much potential here to both raise my family and help build a great basketball culture.”
- Ferry is taking an indefinite leave of absence, as we covered in a full story.
2:46pm update:
- The copy of the scouting report, as hosted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that Ferry is to have read indicates that the information came from someone associated with the Cavs. “Con isn’t bad, but it’s there. African-like store front looks great but there’s a black market section in the back,” the report reads in part. It also attributes a “sense of entitlement” to Deng and suggests that Deng held back while with the Cavs last season to protect himself from injury before he hit free agency in the summer, and that Deng “treated Cleveland like a pit-stop.” Still, the report indicates that he’d be welcome to return to the Cavs.
1:17pm update:
- The snippet of the report that Vivlamore has posted closely resembles some of what Ferry said on the recording of the conference call. “He is a good guy on the cover but he is an African. He has a little two-step in him = says what you want to hear but behind closed doors he could be killing you,” the report stated in part.
1:08pm update:
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV in Atlanta have obtained a copy of the scouting report on Deng that Ferry is to have read during the conference call, Vivlamore tweets. So, that further confirms the report’s existence and casts doubt on the notion that Ferry came up with the disparaging remarks about Deng on his own. The report does reference Deng’s African heritage, according to Vivlamore, but it’s not clear exactly what the report said at this point.
12:34pm update:
- An NBA investigator has seen the report from which Ferry is to have read the remarks about Luol Deng that touched off the controversy, a source tells USA Today’s Sam Amick. The league isn’t punishing Ferry, whom the Hawks have already disciplined, and commissioner Adam Silver has said he doesn’t think Ferry deserves to be fired. Thursday’s release of the audio from the conference call in which Ferry recited insults with racial overtones about Deng prompted widespread speculation that Ferry made the comments off the cuff, and that he wasn’t reading from a scouting report. The investigator also heard the audio before it became public, Amick reports.
- Levenson sent a sharply worded response to a letter that co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. sent to him in June in which Gearon called for Ferry’s ouster, as Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution documents within a timeline of the controversy. Levenson cited “false and misleading comments” within Gearon’s letter, and Levenson expressed reservations about continuing his partnership with Gearon. Levenson announced this past weekend that he’s selling his stake in the team.
- Boris Diaw, Channing Frye, Pau Gasol, Greg Monroe and Thabo Sefolosha were among the other players the Hawks discussed during that conference call, as Vivlamore notes in the same piece. Of those names, Sefolosha was the only one who signed with the Hawks.
Danny Ferry Takes Indefinite Leave From Hawks
3:36pm: Ferry apologized to Deng as part of a statement the Hawks sent out via another press release, one in which he also addressed his leave of absence.
“My focus moving forward is to tirelessly work to rebuild trust with this community and with our fans,” Ferry said in part. “I realize that my words may ring hollow now and my future actions must speak for me. I will maximize my time during this leave to meet with community leaders and further educate myself and others on the extremely sensitive issues surrounding race, diversity, and inclusion. I will find a way to make a positive difference in this area, and further learn from the sensitivity training that I will go through.”
3:04pm: Danny Ferry is taking an indefinite leave of absence from his job as Hawks GM, the team announced via press release. Coach Mike Budenholzer will assume control of the basketball operations while Ferry is away, according to the team’s statement, which CEO Steve Koonin authored.
“This has been an incredibly difficult time for him and his family and it is my hope that this time away from the Hawks organization allows him the privacy he needs to listen to the community, to learn about his mistakes, and to begin the long process of personal healing,” Koonin said in part. “As a human being, manager and friend, I wish him well as he undergoes this process.”
Koonin also hints at the turmoil within the team’s ownership group, which has been wracked with infighting since purchasing the team nine years ago. Co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. has sought Ferry’s ouster and has butted heads with controlling owner Bruce Levenson, who’s selling his stake.
“While the issues related to race are deeply troubling, at the heart of this dispute is an unfortunate disagreement amongst owners,” Koonin said. “That said, we have taken several steps to address what we can do as an organization to be better and stronger, including working with a diversity consultant to examine us and to train us to ensure something like this never happens again, we are committed to hiring a Chief Diversity Officer, and we have and will continue to meet with community leaders in an ongoing way to ensure our values reflect the community in which we play and work. The process of selling the team, which is to remain in Atlanta, is already underway.”
Budenholzer had been preparing to go into just his second season as an NBA head coach after having spent the previous 17 years as an assistant coach for the Spurs. He’s never held a job other than coach in the NBA, save for a two-season stint as video coordinator for the Spurs before he moved to the team’s bench. Atlanta has deals with 15 players, but the team will likely make multiple additions within the next few weeks for training camp.
Koonin has publicly backed Ferry, who received censure from the Hawks for having repeated racially charged statements about free agent target Luol Deng, who’s now with the Heat. Still, Koonin has stood by his decision not to force Ferry out, and Ferry gave no indication he planned to resign when he expressed regret earlier this week about repeating the statements. The NBA has maintained that it doesn’t intend to punish Ferry, and commissioner Adam Silver has said he doesn’t believe what Ferry did should prompt the Hawks to terminate him.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
D.J. Stephens To Join Jazz For Camp?
2:34pm: Stephens’ agent tells Sportando that there’s no deal, but that his client will meet with the Jazz as planned this weekend (Twitter link).
2:00pm: D.J. Stephens and the Jazz have struck a non-guaranteed deal that will bring the former Bucks swingman to training camp, Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi reports. The 23-year-old had been set to work out for the club this weekend, as Boston Globe correspondent Jake Fischer reported earlier today, but either the workout has already taken place or Utah simply decided it already knew enough about Stephens to bring him aboard.
Stephens doesn’t have much of an NBA track record, having appeared in three games for a total of 15 minutes while on a 10-day pact with Milwaukee this past season. That was his only regular season NBA action after he went undrafted out of Memphis, and since he didn’t go to camp with an NBA team last autumn or participate in summer league this year, his only other brush with the league came during summer league in 2013. That year he averaged 4.3 points and 2.5 rebounds in 10.6 minutes per game over eight combined appearances with the summer league squads of the Heat and Mavs.
The APAA Sports Group client has unprecedented hops, as I noted earlier, and he made his mark as a defender in college, winning Conference USA Defensive Player of the Year honors as a senior. He’ll join 18 others on the Jazz, and he’ll face long odds to last on the roster beyond the preseason, since 17 of his new teammates have at least some guaranteed money on their deals. Still, I had been somewhat dubious that his workout would lead to a camp invitation, so perhaps another surprise is in store.
Sixers Sign Ronald Roberts Jr.
SEPTEMBER 29TH: The team acknowledged the signing, including Roberts on the preseason roster it sent via press release.
SEPTEMBER 12TH: The Sixers and Roberts have a signed contract, according to the RealGM transactions log, which confirms the arrangement is for multiple years. The team has yet to make an official announcement.
AUGUST 12TH: 7:33pm: Adam Pensack, Roberts Jr.’s agent, wouldn’t confirm that there was a deal in place between the two sides, reports Dei Lynam of CSNPhilly.com. Pensack added that there’d be news on his client within the next few weeks, says Lynam.
8:41am: The Sixers have agreed to a partially guaranteed deal with undrafted power forward Ronald Roberts Jr. that covers three seasons, as Sportando’s Orazio Cauchi confirms. Cauchi reported earlier this month that Roberts was likely to join the team. The 23-year-old from St. Joseph’s had inked a preliminary deal with Chalon-Sur-Saone of France, but it included a clause that allows him to back out to head to the NBA. It’s likely a minimum-salary arrangement with Philadelphia, though the Sixers have no shortage of cap room if they wanted to exceed that amount.
Roberts had been a long shot to hear his name called on draft night, ranking 93rd in Jonathan Givony’s DraftExpress listings and just 143rd with Chad Ford of ESPN.com, but an impressive summer league stint lifted his stock. He averaged 10.2 points and 7.4 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per game across five appearance for the Sixers summer league team in Orlando. He saw fewer minutes in four games with the Heat’s summer league squad in Las Vegas, notching 7.0 PPG and 3.8 RPG in 14.0 MPG, but he apparently had shown the Sixers enough.
The client of Pensack Sports Management Group joins 13 others on the Sixers, as our roster counts show. Philadelphia has fully guaranteed deals with only six players, an NBA low, and the team’s five agreements that include no guarantee at all are a league high.
Jazz To Work Out D.J. Stephens
Free agent swingman D.J. Stephens will work out for the Jazz this weekend, a source tells Boston Globe correspondent Jake Fischer (Twitter link). Stephens appeared in three games while on a 10-day contract with the Bucks this past season, though there’s been little chatter this summer about a return to the NBA for the 23-year-old who went undrafted out of Memphis in 2013.
Stephens spent most of last season playing in Greece and Turkey, averaging 8.4 points and 7.0 rebounds in 23.8 minutes per contest over a combined 25 games overseas. His otherworldly jumping ability helped offset his relatively short 6’5″ stature as he went after those boards, and the 46-inch vertical leap he performed at the predraft combine in 2013 was the highest ever recorded at the showcase, as DraftExpress shows.
Jazz GM Dennis Lindsey has cast a wide net in his player evaluations during his tenure with the club, so the chance that Stephens’ workout is a precursor to a deal isn’t quite as strong as it might be if he were auditioning for another NBA team. The Jazz are carrying 18 players, and 17 of them are known to have partially guaranteed salary, as our roster counts show, so Stephens has no easy path to the opening-night roster in Utah.
Free Agent Stock Watch: Ryan Hollins
There’s always a market in the NBA for seven-footers who’ve proven capable of handling one or two specific duties, and the interest that a handful of teams are reportedly showing in Ryan Hollins is evidence. Hollins is to have met with the Heat, with the Kings, Bulls and Spurs having etched his name near the top of their remaining wish lists, too. Many NBA clubs take chances on undrafted rookies and second-tier pros as they fill out their training camp rosters this time of year, holding out hope that they can unearth a hidden gem, and while there’s no such upside with Hollins, there’s little risk involved with him, either.
The former UCLA Bruin fell out of the rotation for the Clippers late last season after the team acquired Glen Davis, even though Hollins was as efficient as ever in the minutes he did see. He put up an 11.9 PER, a number better than in all but one of his eight NBA seasons. That’s well below 15.0, the mark of an average NBA player, but for a career reserve who’s never averaged more than 16.9 minutes per game, that stat is not a discredit. More impressive is his 73.6% shooting percentage, a product of self-awareness as much as any other factor. He took 65.3% of his shots from three feet and in, and he made them count, connecting on 87.2% of those looks, according to Basketball-Reference. Just 4.2% of his shots came from farther away than 10 feet. Hollins, less than a month shy of his 30th birthday, is not part of the new breed of floor-stretching big men, and he knows it.
The Todd Ramasar client also knows to stick close to the rim on the other end of the floor. He blocked 2.3 shots per 36 minutes last season, which put him in a three-way tie with Tim Duncan and John Henson for 14th in the league in that category among those who played at least as many total minutes as he did. There’s a decent chance his block rate was artificially high thanks to a small sample size, since he only racked up 482 minutes over the course of the entire season, but it’s not too far removed from the 1.8 blocks per 36 minutes he recorded in 2012/13, when he hit the floor for 663 minutes.
The Clippers were a significantly more effective team defensively when Hollins played the past two seasons, which is surprising, considering that starting center DeAndre Jordan placed third in Defensive Player of the Year balloting this past spring. They gave up 4.4 fewer points per 100 possessions when Hollins played compared to when he didn’t in 2012/13, as NBA.com shows, and 3.9 fewer in 2013/14. Of course, there are a variety of influences that go into that statistic, and it’s far from enough evidence to suggest that Hollins is a better defender than Jordan, or even in the same class. Still, it points to the notion that Hollins should have an NBA job this year, and he probably deserves a role greater than the one he played in the second half of this past season, when he was largely an afterthought.
Doc Rivers has an opening on his Clippers roster, but Spencer Hawes figures to absorb nearly all of the backup minutes behind Jordan. Hollins would provide an inside complement to Hawes’ long-range shooting, but it’s doubtful that Hollins would want to go into the year with little hope of being more than a third-stringer. The Heat have Chris Bosh, Josh McRoberts and Chris Andersen to take the bulk of the minutes at the power positions, and Udonis Haslem will receive plenty of consideration for playing time, too, so Miami might not be the fit that Hollins seeks, even though the Heat lack a true center. The Bulls have Joakim Noah, Pau Gasol, Taj Gibson and Nikola Mirotic crowding the frontcourt. The backup center job for the Kings seems to be a tossup, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the club envisions sliding one of its many power forwards, like Jason Thompson or Reggie Evans, into minutes at center when DeMarcus Cousins sits. Few on the Spurs roster have trouble hitting the floor thanks to Gregg Popovich‘s egalitarian allocation of minutes, but Duncan, Tiago Splitter, and Jeff Ayres are all still around to play center and Hollins is just one of many free agents the team is targeting for its final opening-night roster spot.
There’s no obvious fit for Hollins among the suitors that have so far been identified, so perhaps that explains why he remains unsigned. It’s a distinct possibility that Hollins is better suited to sign after the season begins, when a team might need added depth at center because of injuries. That would allow Hollins to jump immediately into the lineup without having to compete for minutes during training camp. It would also give Ramasar increased leverage in negotiations, since in such instances the team would figure to have greater motivation to make a deal and close on it quickly than most clubs appear to have at this point. In any case, it would be surprising to see Hollins go without an NBA deal this year, and I suspect he’ll sign with a team with playoff aspirations. He’s not the sort of player that a franchise focused on the future would seem to want, but for a club that can’t afford too many mistakes this year, he’d fit right in.
Julyan Stone Signs To Play In Italy
Point guard Julyan Stone has signed with Reyer Venezia of Italy, the team announced (translation via Sportando’s Armando Caporaso). The news is surprising, since a half-dozen NBA teams had reportedly shown interest of late and Stone had apparently fielded a couple of lucrative offers from China. It’s possible that the Italian deal includes some sort of escape clause that would allow him to latch on somewhere else for camp, but that’s not immediately clear, and it seems most likely that the 25-year-old who’s spent the past three years in the NBA won’t be in the league when the 2014/15 season begins.
Reports have indicated that the Spurs, Lakers, Cavs, Clippers and Heat have all been on Stone’s workout agenda in the past couple of weeks, and the Kings looked like they were in the running for him, too. The Raptors cut Stone in July rather than guarantee his minimum salary for the season, though it appeared Toronto had interest in signing him to a new deal once he cleared waivers. He was reportedly in talks with the Sixers, Bucks and Kings around the same time, too, but chatter surrounding the Giovanni Funiciello client dried up until late August.
Raptors GM Masai Ujiri signed the former UTEP Miner to both of his NBA deals, the first coming when Ujiri was in charge of the Nuggets front office. Injury helped keep Stone from seeing much action the past three years, but when he has been available to play, his teams haven’t often called upon him, and he’s averaged just 1.3 points and 1.1 assists in 7.0 minutes per game across 47 appearances for his NBA career.
The addition of Stone makes up for Reyer Venezia’s loss of fellow NBA veteran Lorenzo Brown, whose deal with the team was voided after he failed his physical.
Mustafa Shakur Signs To Play In Lithuania
FRIDAY, 7:48am: The deal is official, the Euroleague announced.
THURSDAY, 4:15pm: Two-year NBA veteran Mustafa Shakur has signed a deal to play for Neptunas, a team in Lithuania, reports Emiliano Carchia of Sportando. The team has yet to make an official announcement, and the terms of the deal aren’t immediately clear, so it’s unknown whether the contract includes any sort of NBA escape clause, but it appears the point guard won’t return to the NBA for camp this fall.
Shakur made cameos in three games with the Thunder after inking a 10-day contract this past March, but Oklahoma City decided against re-signing him once it expired. The Keith Kreiter client spent much of last season in the D-League with the affiliates of the Thunder and Knicks, and he also made a brief two-game sojourn to play for Tadamon Zouk of Lebanon.
The 30-year-old’s most extensive NBA action came in 2010/11 with the Wizards, when he averaged 2.3 points in 7.2 minutes per game across 22 contests. Shakur joins James Anderson and Maalik Wayns among players heading to Lithuania after having spent at least part of last season in the NBA. Both Anderson and Wayns are set to play for Zalgiris Kaunas.
Hawks Rumors: Thursday
The Hawks scandal is in its fifth day, and revelations continue to surface. We’ll track today’s latest developments here, and any additional updates will be added to the top of the post:
6:30pm update:
- Portions of the audio tape from the conference call during which Ferry’s comments were made have now been released, courtesy of Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
2:34pm update:
- Raptors GM Masai Ujiri penned a piece for The Globe and Mail in which he called upon people to “measure [Ferry’s] heart” and forgive him if they believe that he made “an honest and isolated error.” “I spoke to Danny myself about this,” Ujiri wrote in part. “He started off by apologizing to Luol. He apologized to me and apologized for any insult he’d offered to African people in general. He explained the incident as best he could to me. There are some things about that conversation I would like to keep between the two of us, but I came away feeling like I’d understood what he had to say.”
1:29pm update:
- GM Danny Ferry‘s fateful remarks about Luol Deng weren’t the first racially charged statements attributed to Ferry, as SB Nation’s Tom Ziller details. Agent William Phillips told Marty McNeal of The Sacramento Bee in 2006 that Ferry, then a player for the Spurs, used an racist slur to insult Phillips client Bonzi Wells during a game in 2002, as McNeal reminded with a pair of tweets this week. Ferry called McNeal after the story ran to deny using the epithet. Commissioner Adam Silver cited Ferry’s clean track record when he said Wednesday that he didn’t think the Hawks should fire Ferry.
- Ferry’s “smug manner” of dealing with some Hawks staffers rubbed co-owner Michael Gearon Jr. the wrong way, a source tells Michael Lee of The Washington Post. Gearon was reportedly an opponent of Ferry even before Ferry made his comments about Deng in June.
- Steve Belkin’s departure from the Hawks ownership group a few years ago left Bruce Levenson with a stake representing close to 60% of the franchise, a source tells TNT’s David Aldridge. That seems to conflict with a report we passed along Tuesday from Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution indicating that Levenson doesn’t own a majority of the team. Levenson was acting as the controlling owner of the Hawks until this past weekend, when he announced that he was selling his share after the revelation of a racially charged 2012 email.